[79] Right livelihood is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we get rid of all evil ways.
正命是法明門、除滅一切惡道故。
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When this gate refers to all evil ways, it’s referring to something specific in the Buddhist tradition.  Let’s start by understanding what right livelihood is about and then we’ll see how it’s related to these evil ways, also knows as unfortuate destinies.

In general, right livelihood means not making a living by things like stealing, gambling, killing, pandering, etc.  Clearly, these things break the precepts.  They’re unwholesome activities in any event, but if the motivation for doing them is to make money, now we’ve added a whole new layer of trouble.

The tradition has two sets of teachings about right livelihood, one for householders and one for the ordained sangha.  Buddha says, “A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.”  Elsewhere, he says there are two other jobs we should avoid: being a soldier and being an actor, soldiering because of the killing involved and acting because we stir up the passions and emotions and delusions of the audience.  

Overall: don’t make your living by engaging in breaking precepts yourself or causing others to break precepts.  It’s unwholesome for you and unwholesome for others.  Trafficking in weapons enables killing by others even if you yourself aren’t doing the killing.  Selling drugs creates delusion and suffering for others even if you yourself aren’t taking them.  We can’t predict the outcome of our actions, so it would be easy to say, well, it’s not my fault if people use something I sell them to do harm.  However, if we really aspire to skillful action and liberating beings from suffering, we have to look at our motivation for engaging in a particular form of livelihood.  Frequently that motivation is money, and we’ll come back to that shortly.

There’s an additional set of warnings for monks.  In the Chiji Shingi, or Pure Standards for the Temple Administrators, Dogen warns the monks that there are four wrong livelihoods for them.  These come from a commentary on the Mahaparinirvana Sutra attributed to Nagarjuna.  The four wrong livelihoods are:

• conveying orders for the national government (in earlier texts, this is running errands for laypeople)
• fortune-telling or divination by palm reading or reading nature
• divination using astrology
• growing grain

Dogen says if your food comes to you by means of any of these four wrong livelihoods, you shouldn’t eat it.  (For more on right livelihood food, see this short video.)

The first wrong livelihood about doing things for the government or laypeople is pointing to a larger teaching about doing things in direct exchange for some reward.  If Buddha stopped to give a teaching to a layperson and that grateful person went into his house to find something to offer in return, Buddha wouldn’t accept it.  He says we don’t teach for personal gain; we just offer the dharma freely without expectation.  Monks are not at the beckon call of society for the purpose of gaining some material reward.  Supposedly they’d left home to concentrate on practice.  Otherwise they could have kept their jobs and their old lives.

Monks also shouldn’t engage in fortune telling and divination.  There has been Buddhist “magic” from beginning of the tradition, and the prohibition also goes all the way back to the Buddha.  He said these things are debased arts and are not based on actually seeing reality, and he himself would never do them.  The Pali canon has pages and pages of the kinds of divination, charms and spells we’re not supposed to engage in, but throughout history it’s happened anyway.  In a way, it was means of building a relationship with the local laity.  Monks offered these services as a way of meeting people’s need to predict and control their environment, and of course they often got some contribution for it.  However, Buddha, Nagarjuna and Dogen say that’s not a wholesome way of supporting yourself.  (If you’re chanting a dharani for preventing disaster as part of your practice and you’re not getting any payment or food offering or something for it, that’s different.)  If you’re doing it for money, you’re also encouraging people to rely on your special powers rather than on their own practice of seeing reality clearly for themselves.

Lastly, the admonition against farming comes from original Indian teachings.  Monks were supposed to live only on alms and not do any work like this themselves.  By the time Zen moved through China and into Japan, work practice including farming was really important and monks were fairly self-sufficient.  Dogen seems to be OK with accurately quoting the commentary even though that’s not how people were actually living by then.  The important question here is: are you doing whatever you do for a living mainly in order to get as much wealth as possible for yourself?  Even if the work itself isn’t unwholesome, are you carrying it out in an unwholesome way by cheating your customers, underpaying your employees, engaging in illegal business practices or doing other unethical stuff?

Going back to the Buddha’s time, right livelihood also includes household management, considering not only how you made your money but how you’re handling it now.  The teachings about this vary a little between householders and monks who’ve left home and live in the temple.  Buddha says a householder knowing his income and expenses leads a balanced life, neither extravagant nor miserly, knowing that thus his income will stand in excess of his expenses, but not his expenses in excess of his income.  

However, Uchiyama Roshi says:
Sawaki Roshi often said that losing is enlightenment  and gaining is delusion,  In the ordinary world, the principle is that if expenditures keep increasing, we’ll eventually go bankrupt.  In Buddhadharma, we have to become comfortable with the attitude that even if we are bankrupt and live in poverty, we should keep increasing expenditures.  Unless we really accept such an attitude, we’ll never live a truly wealthy life.  In other words, if you wish to be rich, first of all be poor.  In human life, it is very difficult to lower our standard of living once we have enjoyed a materially rich life.  So, we should not try to raise our standard of living; rather we should try to train ourselves to settle in poverty.  This is the wealthiest way of life.  (1)

Uchiyama Roshi often said that he’d never been gainfully employed for more than a few months in his life.  He felt it was really important to his practice that he be a poor monk, to accept that situation and live within it.  If you have a home and family, you can’t live that way, but you can still practice letting go of greed, anger and ignorance and try to live in a sustainable way that doesn’t harm other beings or yourself and isn’t based on grasping and clinging.

All of the elements of the eightfold path are connected, so right livelihood doesn’t exist by itself.  It’s part of the section on ethics or sila, which also includes right speech and right action, the last two gates we’ve considered, but it’s also connected to the rest of the wheel.  Buddha says it all starts with right view:  “And how is right view the forerunner? One discerns wrong livelihood as wrong livelihood, and right livelihood as right livelihood. And what is wrong livelihood? Scheming, persuading, hinting, belittling, & pursuing gain with gain. This is wrong livelihood...

“One tries to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter into right livelihood: This is one’s right effort. One is mindful to abandon wrong livelihood & to enter & remain in right livelihood: This is one’s right mindfulness. Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right livelihood.”  

First we’ve got to be able to look at what we’re doing with the eyes of Buddha, or with prajna, and see clearly our motivation and whether what we’re doing is wholesome, helpful and skillful or not.  Then we’ve got to actually do something about it.  We might have to change our business practices, or we might even have to find new careers, and that might not be easy.  It takes courage and commitment, and some real effort, to make sure that we’re living in an ethical way now, and that we don’t backslide when things get tough.  That’s why we practice the entire eightfold path, not just the elements that we pick and choose.

Now we need to look at the other half of the gate statement, the “evil ways,” or three unfortunate paths or destinies.  These are the the three lower realms of the rokudo, or six realms on the wheel of samsara: animals, hungry ghosts, and existence in hell.  (The three higher realms are heavenly beings, humans and fighting gods.)  The concept of the rokudo goes back to pre-Buddhist India.  It’s part of the beliefs about transmigration or rebirth, that what you do in this life determines the circumstances of your next life, and that this happens over and over again.  Buddhism picks up this idea and teaches that all living beings are born into one of these six realms of samsara or states of existence.  We’re all trapped on this wheel of life, going around and around until we can liberate ourselves from desire and suffering.  Each rebirth in samsara, and which realm we end up in,  depends on our actions in this life.

The animal realm is characterized by stupidity and servitude.  It includes livestock, animals driven by impulse or instinct, and those that prey on each other.

Hungry ghosts experience eternal craving and starvation.  Sometimes they’re said not to have a body, and sometimes have very small mouths but very large stomachs.  Somehow they’re always extremely thirsty and hungry.  You get there because of your greed and grasping in this life.  There’s some difference of opinion about which is worse, the hungry ghost realm or the animal realm, but in any case, you don’t want to be in either one!

Beings in hell are in the lowest realm and worst possible situation.  They experience constant torture and agression.  You get there because of behavior like lying, stealing, or adultery.  There isn’t just one big hell -- there are many, many different hells, and each one has a specific kind of intense suffering, like heat, cold, or being eaten alive.  
 
In the Mahayana, and for us today, these six realms tend to be taken as mindstates rather than actual places of rebirth.  You don’t end up in one of these places for eternity; when you’ve used up your evil karma, you’re reborn somewhere else on the wheel and you get another chance.  The place you want to end up in is the human realm, because that’s the only place where you can practice and wake up and become free from the wheel of samsara.  Clearly, the three unfortunate destinies are manifestations of the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance.  If you’re greedy, you go to the realm of hungry ghosts.  If you’re angry, you go to a hell realm.  If you’re ignorant, you go to the animal realm.

Now, what does this have to do with right livelihood?  Right livelihood requires us to take some kind of action.  If that action and our motivation are based on one of the three poisons, we end up with an unfortunate destiny.  It really reinforces that it’s not just what we’re doing but why that’s important.  In the Pali canon there’s a story of a monk who became quite good at medicine and treating the sick.  It sounds like a good thing, and a way to relieve suffering, but one day a grateful patient gave him a really elegant and expensive food item, some kind of delicacy, and the monk got all excited about it.  He ran to his friend Shariputra to show him, and he offered to share his food with Shariputra, but Shariputra just looked at him and walked away.  He was disgusted that the monk was caught up in this kind of greed, even though the action that was being rewarded was healing suffering.

We start by choosing a lifelihood that brings wholesomeness and skillful action into the world rather than the opposite.  This takes some discernment, and we don’t just do that discernment one time.  We do it again and again as part of our practice.  How do we consider what livelihood we should take up?  We can think about our karmic circumstances, which includes what we’re good at and what we like to do.  It’s probably no good to aspire to do something wonderful for which we’re really not suited.  My father is a doctor and would have been happy if I’d turned out to be a doctor too, but I’m not much good at chemistry.  I was much better suited to a career in communications.

Even within a career, there are different ways to participate in a particular field.  If you’re a doctor, are you better suited to research or to direct patient care?  Are you a diagnostician, a surgeon, a pathologist?  Each set of five skandhas is unique and that’s fine.  We’re going to be more skilled at some things than others.  

So how do we make sure that that livelihood is bodhisattva activity?  We can consider our bodhisattva vows, our practice of the eightfold path, and the precepts.  How well does what we’re doing fit with these teachings and guidelines?  What’s our real motivation for taking it up?  Maybe we’re motivated by greed; either we choose the career because it’s lucrative, or we do whatever job we have in such a way that we get everything we can for ourselves.  Greed might be for money, but it might be for power, fame or other things, like the biggest office or the most recognition or the best promotion—whatever we’re grasping and clinging to related to our livelihood.

It can be pretty difficult to distinguish the desire to do the best job we can from the desire to get something for ourselves.  That’s where we have to do a lot of really honest discernment, and the result is often mixed.  In order to do the best job I can, I need more staff, but also having more staff makes me feel more important.  

Are we in it for money even though we hate the job or career?  We’re not talking about doing something that isn’t your dream job because you need to feed your family or pay for your education.  We’re talking about craving and greed for a luxurous lifestyle, expensive things, or social status, actions that feed the ego and encourage clinging.

The bottom line is: are we harming others in order to get what we want?  Are we perpetuating suffering for our own gain?  This kind of honesty with ourselves is really hard sometimes, but making mistakes about this sends us to the realm of hungry ghosts.

And how about anger?  Probably, no one takes a job out of anger, but we could argue that some jobs perpetuate violence in various ways.  Buddha says don’t be a soldier, but I know practitioners who are or were in the military and there are Buddhist chaplains in the military today, so this is an unfolding story without clear answers.

Buddha also says don’t be an arms dealer, because weopons are about killing or harming.  You could extend that to selling recreational fishing equipment or even insecticide, but what if farmers using the insecticide grow more food to feed hungry people?  Again, there are no clear answers and that discussion could go on forever.  Mistakes about livelihood based on anger or violence send us to one of the hell realms

Then there’s ignorance.  A livelihood based on ignorance encourages people to take action based on their baser insticts.  For animals, including humans, that means survival and reproduction.  Animals want to avoid death and to pass on their genes, so it’s survival of the individual and survival of the species.  Those things aren’t bad; goodness knows we wouldn’t be here without them, but what happens when we harm others in order to survive and pass on our genes?  I make sure I have all the food, clothing and shelter I think I need regardless of whether or not you have enough.  I don’t understand where suffering comes from, so I elbow you out of the way to make sure I’m OK.  There’s a real element of self-involvement and selfishness that goes with ignorance.  There are a lot of ways to be selfish in the workplace, even if the job or career is otherwise wholesome.  When we make mistakes based on ignorance, we end up in the animal realm.

As we can see, this whole livelihood thing and its relationship to precepts and the three poisons is pretty complicated.  There will probably always be some element of self clinging even in a job that does good in the world.  Our motivations can be mixed, and we have to make decisions and take responsibility for the outcomes.  It’s not as easy as saying that if we just choose the right livelihood, we’re guaranteed to stay out of the three unfortunate destinies, but because we spend so much of our time, energy, attention and ego being in the workplace, it’s a huge place of practice.  If we’re not taking our practice to work, we’ve somehow missed the connection between practice and rest of our lives.  Where are there more chances for becoming annoyed, or trying to get ahead, or feeling satisfaction when we’ve helped someone else?  The whole daily human experience is right there on the job.  Do I feel good about what I’m doing to support myself?  Do I feel good about the way I’m doing that work, and the circumstances in which I work?  If not, what can I do about it?  Are there teachngs I can remember when I start to get carried away by delusion and unskillful actions of body, speech and mind?  How can I bring both wisdom and compassion to work and see what’s really going on with me and others?

We don’t have to wear our rakusus to work and evangelize for Buddha at the copy machine.  We can bring our practice to work quietly.  It’s the ground of our own life and activity, but in my experience, if we move through the world as quiet, steady bodhisattvas, we provide a refuge and an oasis for others, even if they don’t know why.  That’s when we can do the right job and we can do the job right.

Notes:
(1) Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom: Three Fascicles from Shobogenzo with Commentary. (2018). United States: Wisdom Publications, p. 51-52. 

Right action is a gate of Dharma illumination, for with it there is no karma and no retribution.
正業是法明門、無業無報故.

The word karma just means action.  In early India, in the Vedic tradition, actions from the past influenced the present, and karma worked in a straight line.  When Buddhism came along, things got a little more complicated.  There are multiple things influencing the action of this moment, and there is some measure of free will that gets mixed in.  Flowing water is a common image used to describe this kind of functioning.  Sometimes the current of the flowing water is very strong, and all we can do is hang on for dear life.  At other times, that flow is more gentle, and there’s some chance to divert that water, to influence where it goes or to reroute it in some way.  This shift turns karma from something that’s depressing, in which there’s there’s no escape from our suffering because our circumstances inevitably lead to some disaster, pain or suffering for us, into something a little more encouraging.  We can pay attention to what we’re thinking, saying and doing, the three ways we create karma.  We can take some skillful or wholesome action that at least doesn’t create more suffering.  We can’t change what we’ve already done, but at least we can pay some attention to how we’re moving forward from here.

In fact, Uchiyama Roshi says, "In Japanese, we have expressions such as, a person with deep karma, or, a person whose karma is very strong.  These expressions refer to those with extreme condition viewpoints, partly as a result of intensive life experiences.  Buddhism is often misunderstood as a teaching of resignation that makes me think, I can’t help it.  It’s my karma.  Such a teaching cannot be true Buddhism.  Instead, Buddhism teaches us to soften our rigid karmic standpoint, deconstruct the illusory views of the karmic self and see life as it is."

We have some chance to make a difference, to do something else.  The early Indian belief is that there is an unchanging soul or entity called atman that transmigrates through various conditions, life after life after life, being pulled by good or bad karma.  The atman was a a fixed self which in itself was pure but was imprisoned in the body, and the body was the source of desire, delusion and hindrances.  Somehow there was a pure something which is encased in this flesh, which is the source of problems or pain.

The atman served as the owner or driver of the body, the way you might drive a car.  When the body and mind die, the atman or the owner leaves the body, transmigrates, and is born with a new body in mind.  The circumstances of being reborn are dependent on the good and bad deeds that the owner has done and the resulting karma.   Buddhism, however, teaches that there is no fixed permanent self.  no atman, no soul, nothing that is fixed and unchanging.  There are only the five skandhas of this body and mind, and those five skandas are themselves empty of any permanent, fixed self nature.  There’s nothing we can cling to about this, but that doesn’t negate cause and effect, and this is a thorny problem that’s never been resolved.  

There is still cause and effect, in some cases even beyond this lifetime.  We do things in this life, for instance, that continue to have some effect even after we’re not here anymore.  We put certain things in motion.  People have memories of their encounters with us or things we did, sometimes many years after we’re gone.  My mother died more than 20 years ago, and I’m still doing things today that she taught me to do.  Also, at some point, I had an ancestor that got on the boat in Greece and came to this country, and I’m here because of that.  In some way, their lives are still unfolding.

What determines whether we are creating good karma or bad karma is our motivation.  Buddha identified four kinds of karma; karma that’s dark with a dark result, karma that’s bright with a bright result, karma that’s dark and bright with a dark and bright result, and karma that’s neither dark nor bright and has neither a dark nor bright result.  That one is the ending of karma.  Dark means something painful or unwholesome, something that’s creating suffering.  Bright means something pleasant and wholesome and doesn’t create suffering.  Karma that is neither dark nor light results in taking up the eightfold path.

Karma that’s dark and bright with a dark and bright result is a reminder that even when we try to do good and take the right action, somehow, sometimes suffering still results.  It’s not completely dark or completely bright, but somewhere in the middle.  We have some good intention, and yet perhaps some suffering results.  Sometimes we make mistakes, or we actually intend to do something that isn’t so wholesome, and yet something wholesome comes out of it.  I’d venture to guess that the mixture of dark and bright is where 98% of our action falls.  It’s very difficult to take an action that doesn’t have some little piece of self-interest or delusion in it.  Okumura Roshi says, “Intentionally or not, we may create unwholesome karma even when doing good.  We must carefully examine our motivations.  Identifying twisted karma is easier when we take unwholesome actions that disturb others than when we’re trying to help.  Even if we fail to recognize our bad behavior at the time, other people will let us know through their advice, blame, anger, or dislike.  But when we create twisted karma with our good deeds, people are usually happy and praise us, and we, in turn, are proud of our actions.  In these cases, perceiving the deep and subtle self-centeredness within our benevolence can be very difficult.  This is why our practice of zazen as repentance is significant.  In zazen, we cannot hide from ourselves.  As the Kanfugenbosatsugyohokyo says, “If you wish to make repentance, sit upright and be mindful of the true reality.”

There’s always this little bit of mixture.  Giving is a wonderful thing; offering help is a great thing to do.  Of course, if we’re doing it in order to get something back, we’re looking for praise, rewards, love, good publicity or self-image, it can actually generate bad karma.  We’ve started out with some wonderful motivation to give something to help somebody, and yet there’s this little bit of clinging in there that can create some unwholesomeness in the midst of that action.  We can be cultivating pride, arrogance and attachment rather than loving kindness, and generosity.

That doesn’t mean we don’t take the good action.  We just have to be aware of where we’re clinging and where we’re stuck, because there’s probably no pure action.  There’s physical karma, there’s verbal karma, and there’s mental karma.  Bad physical karma means killing, stealing, or misusing sex.  Bad verbal karma means lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, or idle chatter.  Bad mental karma is all about the three poisons or greed, anger, and ignorance.  Thus there are ten kinds of unskillful action that create suffering for other people as well as for ourselves.  It’s a reminder about cause and result, an important teaching in our tradition.  Of course, there are also ten kinds skillful actions, which are the opposite of those ten unwholesome things.  The resolution not to engage in those ten unwholesome things is also a skillful action.

Every time we see what we’re feeling pulled toward and decide That’s not a wholesome thing; I’m not going to do it, that in itself is right action.  We take right action now and avoid creating bad, harmful karma that feels painful and unsatisfactory, and at the same time we’re setting up causes and conditions for something in the future.  The impact of taking good action now goes beyond here and now.

One way we reinforce our intention is with our bodhisatva vows, whether we do that publicly by participating in jukai-e or we just have a private resolution to live this way.  When we live by vow, we stop living by karma and our motivation becomes the well-being of everyone.  It doesn’t leave ourselves out, but it goes beyond our own  personal private self-interest.  Uchiyama Roshi says, “Most people live by their desires or karma.  They go through their lives dragged around by desires and hindered by the consequences of previous harmful actions.  In Japanese, that life is called gōshō no bōmpu.  Gōshō are the obstructions to practicing the way caused by our evil actions in the past.  Bōmpu simply means ordinary human being, that is, one who lives by karma.  Our actions are dictated by our karma.  We are born into this world with our desires and may live our whole lives just reacting or responding to them.” (1)

That feels like our day to day experience.  We’re constantly being pulled by things we like and things we don’t like, chasing after stuff and running away from stuff.  He goes on to say that the contrast to that is the way of life of a bodhisattva who lives by vow, gansho no bosatsu.  The focus of the bodhisattva is on liberating all beings from suffering.  We can’t act in the past, and we can’t act in the future; now is all we’ve got.  Once we’ve taken some action, we can’t undo it.  We can’t change the creation of that karma, for good or ill.  We can only really see what’s happening, do repentance, renew the vow to take unskillful action and cultivate skillful action going forward.  We’re still responsible for what happened, but we can’t change what we’ve set in motion.  It’s important to head off unskillful action to the degree we can before we take it, so paying attention is important.

The result of our action can color the way we see the world in subtle ways.  Sawaki Roshi says, “Gokan, or seeing according to one’s karma, is one’s good or bad past actions extending into the present.  For example, a widow who has lived her whole life obsessed with sex might be jealous of young couples.  Ordinary human beings are pulled by their karma and view the world only according to their karmic conditions.  Such people continue undesirable yet unseverable relations with each other one lifetime after another.  This is called perpetual wandering within samsara.”  

In the early teachings, engaging in unwholesome actions was said to create karma that was eventually going to send you to one of the hell realms on the wheel of samsara.  Uchiyama Roshi says we get hypnotized by ourselves, which means we just follow our habituated karmic thinking.  Without asking why we’re doing what we’re doing or where those impulses are coming from, we just get carried along on a stream of being influenced by what’s unfolding.  When we pay attention to what we’re doing, we might realize we’re doing things we don’t want to do anymore, or that we have habits of reacting to things that aren’t actually helpful.  If we can step back and look at what we’re doing, we can make some conscious decisions about it.

Dogen’s comment on right action as a factor of awakening is too long to include in its entirety, and it’s mostly a long rant.  He goes on a tear about Zen masters who pander to kings, rich people and laity in general by saying that it’s possible to receive the truth of the buddhadharma without leaving home and becoming a monk.  He thinks these Zen masters are trying to gain some favor or material wealth and that they don’t have any real interest in helping people to practice or in sharing the dharma.  He’s attacking these folks because to him, right action starts with leaving home, and he says the 37 factors awakening are the actions of a monk.  

Right action as a branch of the path is to leave family life and to practice the truth.  It is to go into the mountains and to gain experience.  Shakyamuni Buddha says the 37 elements are the actions of a monk.  The actions of a monk are beyond the great vehicle and beyond the small vehicle.  There are buddha monks, bodhisattva monks, sravaka monks, and so on.  None has succeeded to the right action of the buddhadharma, and none has received the authentic transmission of the great truth of the buddhadharma without leaving family life.  (2)

He goes on to use the examples of Bodhidharma and Shakyamuni as practitioners who couldn’t have done what they did for the dharma without leaving home.  Bodhidharma is said to have left India and gone to China to transmit the dharma.  Shakyamuni left his family, went over the wall and declined to rule the kingdom after his father, not because kinship isn’t important, Dogen says, but because he simply wanted to devote himself to the dharma.

The main point of his comment is that being a home leaver is itself right action, and all the activities that flow from being a home leaver are also right action.  He says that once someone truly encounters the dharma, then he or she immediately wants to leave family life, simply take up practice and only engage in that.  He concludes in his comment, “Right action is the action of a monk.  It is beyond the knowledge of commentary teachers and sutra teachers.  The action of a monk means effort inside the cloud hall, prostrations inside the Buddha hall, washing the face inside the washroom, and so on.  It means joining hands and bowing, burning instance and boiling water.  This is right action.  It is not only to replace a tail with a head, it is to replace a head with a head.  It is to replace the mind with the mind.  It is to replace Buddha with Buddha, and it is to replace the truth with the truth.  This is just right action as a branch of the path.  If appreciation of the buddhadharma is faulty, the eyebrows and whiskers fall down and out and the face falls apart.”

Before we all give up our practice because we’re not living in a temple and because we have lives outside of Sanshin, we need to remember that Dogen doesn’t actually take this same position consistently throughout his writing.  Either he changes his mind over time or he adjusts what he’s saying depending on the audience.  Sometimes he says being a monk is the only option.  Sometimes he validates lay practice or practice outside of the temple.  We need to be careful not to be too literal about this.  I don’t think he’s telling us that if we don’t live in a temple, we shouldn’t be practicing, so please don’t take that to heart.  I think he’s saying right action is simply carrying out daily activities.  If you’re in the temple, that’s the all-day practice activities of temple life.  If not, it’s about taking care of our daily lives, taking care of the things we vow to do in whatever context we’re doing them.  Zazen, doing liturgy, taking care of our bodies, doing our work tasks, whatever it is that makes up our bodhisattva action in the world is right action.

In other words, right action is just sincerely, wholeheartedly doing our practice moment by moment by moment, seeing the way Buddha sees, remembering our vows, remembering our commitments, doing our best to carry them out with compassion, wisdom and clarity.  

Then he says, It is not only to replace a tail with a head, it’s to replace a head with a head.  What does he mean by that?  Right action is not about just replacing attention to broader spiritual concerns with attention to everyday activities.  We have to see those everyday activities as spiritual practice.  We have to see all of our activities as dharma gates, as a way both to study the dharma and to express buddha nature.  Every little thing we do, all of our day-to-day responsibilities, if we’re in the temple, if we’re not in the temple, all those things are dharma gates.  How do we see our everyday walking the dog, paying the bills, washing the dishes, doing our work in the office as practice?  If we come to them with that spirit and intention, all of those things become right action.  

Dogen goes on to say, It is to replace the mind with the mind.  It is to replace Buddha with Buddha, and it is to replace the truth with the truth.  Real bodhisattvas are people who practice and cultivate right action for the sake of practice and right action, not because they’re going to get something back.  These bodhisatvas aren’t  replacing bad karma with good karma for a selfish end or in order to fix their bad karma so that they feel better.  Action is happening because it’s in the best interest of all beings

If appreciation of the Buddha Dharma is faulty, the eyebrows and whiskers fall down and out and the face falls apart.  You may have actually encountered that image in other texts; Dogen didn’t make this one up.  Eyebrows or whiskers falling out is often an image of somebody speaking inappropriately about the dharma, whether from ignorance or intention, and receiving a spiritual retribution—and now we’re back to the gate statement.  Often, the problem is a teacher speaking too much.  Explaining too much or saying too much about the dharma can be inappropriate.  Then, supposedly, the whiskers and the eyebrows fall out and the face falls apart.  

Our teachers tell us that in zazen, we don’t create karma.  We’re just sitting there in complete thusness, not making any decisions, not doing anything, simply dropping off body and mind.  We’re not taking any action that’s motivated by the three poisons or by the opposite of the three poisons.  We’re simply sitting, and yet thoughts keep coming up based on our karma.  Something is continuing to unfold, even though our intention is to sit quietly.  We’ve got stuff on our minds because we encounter causes causes and conditions, living in these karmic bodies and minds and going through our daily activities in this samsaric world.  Even though we might not be creating new karma in zazen, our old karma is continuing to play out.  

When Shakyamuni experienced awakening under the bodhi tree, he didn’t poof, disappear.  He had to live the rest of his life, because his karma was still playing out.  Our challenge in zazen is not to keep getting pulled back into our karma by grabbing those thoughts, adding something in there, creating a cocktail.  It’s so easy to get sucked back into what’s on our minds when we’re sitting.  We can’t stop thinking in zazen, and we don’t want to.  It’s not possible.  It’s not a goal.  However, if we’re chasing our thoughts, we’re not really engaged in zazen.  We’re mostly just caught up in this karmic consciousness that keeps letting these thoughts bubble up.  Our practice is to hold both of these things: freedom from attachment and delusion, and taking right action with this body and mind, which is all we have to use.  This karmic body and mind is the ground of practice.

As Okumura Roshi says, we have manifestation and liberation.  We’re manifesting something, and yet there’s liberation.  There’s form and emptiness, and all of this happening at the same time.  We’re in this body and mind, but we’re free from this body and mind in a certain a way.  It’s a karmically created body and mind and we’re moving through a karmic world, and yet, if we’re not attached, if we’re seeing clearly, we’re free from this body and mind.  Okumura Roshi says, “Viewing things with the true dharma eye and viewing things with our karmic consciousness are very different.  As bodhisatvas, we need to see things with the true dharma eye.  Still, we are not completely free from our karmic consciousness.  We have to live out our karma.  Precisely speaking, our karmic condition is the only device we can use to practice.  If this is our attitude toward our daily lives and in our zazen, we can let go of our karma and be liberated from our attachment to it.  We need both manifestation and liberation as our life."  

How do we embrace both of them in a skillful way?  When we get up off the cushion, we have to go out and do things.  We have to make choices.  We have to determine what actions to take as we just move through the world in a normal everyday way.  Those choices are based on our values and experiences and our worldviews and all of that, which is an unfolding of our karma.  Even when we’re really, really trying to take good action and be skillful in the world for the sake of the dharma, every choice is a continuation of that past karma, and it sets up new karma.  There’s this continuous unfolding all the time.  The choices we make, the worldview we have, the perceptions we have, are influenced by the things that we’re carrying around, the things that have happened already.  

Based on that, we make a choice that sets up something that continues to unfold.  That’s not a bad thing; it’s the way life is and the way this karmically conditioned body and mind work.  We can’t float around not making choices, living on some higher plane, which is why we’re talking about replacing a head with a head or a tail with a head.  We can’t avoid taking actions; it’s not responsible, and in some cases it’s dangerous.  We’d better know whether that’s a red light or a green one.  We’d better know this food is spoiled and this food is wholesome.  We just need to remember that our choices and actions are influenced by our karma, and this is how we create our lives, moment by moment by moment.  Can we avoid being in the thrall of past unwholesome stuff we’ve done? Can we recognize what happened and take responsibility for that, and then decide what the right action is in this moment?  Even as I’m influenced by and carried forward by the things of the past, what do I do now?  I can take some action in this moment.  I can recognize the influence.  I don’t have to get stuck there or just get carried along.  If I’m really paying attention, watching my habituated thinking, reflexes and impulses, I have a choice now.  

Okumura Roshi gets the last word today.  He says, “Our practice in daily life is about creating wholesome karma.  In this context, wholesome karma means to manifest in daily life what we experience in zazen.  There’s a separation between myself and other people in myriad things.  That is how the Buddha is expressed in everyday activities.  With all the choices we have to make, we try to make these choices in the direction of the bodhisatva path.  That is our life based on zazen and the bodhisatva vows.” (3)

Notes:
(1) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 117.  
​(2) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 13.
(3) Okumura, S. (2018). The Mountains and Waters Sutra: A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's "Sansuikyo". United States: Wisdom Publications, ch. 1.

Right speech is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] concepts, voice, and words all are known as sound.
正語是法明門、一切名字、音聲語言、知如響故。

Speech is one of the actions that comes out of view and thinking, the first two elements of the eightfold path.  First we perceive something, then we have some intention about it, and then we say or do something.

This isn’t our first go-round with right speech.  The last time we discussed it was at Gate 6, when we saw that  paying attention to the actions of the mouth headed off a group of evils: lying, spreading rumors, slander, engaging in idle talk, and speaking in a way that causes problems between others.  This is the traditional definition of right speech, and we don’t need to spend a lot of time on it again here.  The more interesting wrinkle now is “concepts, voice and words are all known as sound.”  The word translated here as sound can also be “echo” or “reverberation.”  

There’s an important text called The Treatise on the Great Prajñāpāramitā.  It says it was written by Nagarjuna, but not actually clear who the author is.  The text talks about ten illusions that can be metaphors for emptiness; bodhisattvas can see through these illusory things.  That list includes things like magic tricks and reflections, and the circle that appears in the air if you put a light on the end of a string and whirl it around.  Bodhisattvas understand that dharmas or forms are like echoes in that they seem to be a certain kind of real sound phenomenon, but what we might think they are isn’t the whole story.

When you hear an echo, it sounds like someone on the other side of the valley is talking or yodeling or something, but that’s not what’s really happening—it’s a reflection.  The Treatise on the Great Prajna Paramita says:
Whether in a narrow valley in the deep mountains, or in a deep sheer ravine, or in an empty large building, whether the sound of a voice, or the sound of striking, there is sound from sound, named “echo.” Ignorant people claim that the sound is from the voice of a person; the wise think in their minds, “This sound is not made by a person, but merely by way of the contact of sound, there is therefore a further sound, named echo. The thing [named] echo is empty, able to deceive the ear faculty.

An echo is something like the face in the mirror or the moon reflected in the water.  There is the face or the moon, and they’re real, and there’s also the reflection.  The reflection is real too, but we don’t see it for what it is and we take it to be the object that’s reflected.

Later on this text shows how we get caught up in illusions and create suffering for ourselves.  It uses the example of people who are searching for a city.  They see a mirage in the distance and go rushing toward it.  They’re hot and tired, and then they think the heat rising off the ground looks like water—another mirage.  Then the text says:
Exhausted and troubled, they reach the middle of a narrow valley in the deep mountains, and loudly shout and cry out.  Hearing the responding echo, they claim that there are people living there. Searching for them, exhausted, they still see nothing at all. On contemplation, they realize for themselves, and put an end to their thirsty wishes.

Ignorant people are likewise.  With respect to the empty aggregates, elements, and senses, they see a me-self and dharmas, their minds grasping with lust and aversion, crazily running about around in the four directions, seeking pleasure to satisfy themselves, perverse and deceived, extremely frustrated and afflicted. If, by way of wisdom, one knows dharmas as being without self, without reality, at that time the perverted wishes will end.

If we don’t understand that our ideas are echoes or reflections of reality and we try to grab hold of them, those desires create suffering for us.  When we do see them for what they are, the desire ends.

Here’s one more example of a teacher using an echo as an illustration of how our perception of things isn’t the same as the things themselves.  This is from Daoxin or Doushin, a 4th century Zen master:
Day and night, whether walking, standing still, sitting, or lying down, if you continuously contemplate things in this way you will know that your own body is like the moon in water, a reflection in a mirror, heat waves on a hot day, or an echo in an empty valley. You cannot say it has being (u) because even if you try to catch it you cannot see its substance. You also cannot say [it has no being] (mu) because it is clearly in front of your eyes. (1) 

Both of the texts are relating echoes to our perception of the five skandhas.  People hear echoes and think they represent something solid that’s generating a sound.  Likewise, we perceive a self and think it’s something other than an impermanent five aggregates.  The point of all these things is that something comes in through our sense gates and we want to make something substantial out of it.  Then we take that story to be solid reality and forget that it’s just our reflection of what we’ve encountered.

What does this have to do with our gate statement?  Words are reflections or symbols of whatever they describe.  The word “fire” won’t burn anything.  The word “spaghetti” won’t satisfy anyone’s hunger.  If we understand speech and words correctly, we don’t cling to them.  We need them and they’re useful because we have to communicate in language, but we understand that the words aren’t the things themselves just like a map is only a picture of the terrain.  Concepts, voice and words are empty of any fixed and permanent self nature just like all other dharmas.

However, in that very emptiness we can see (or hear) buddha nature or awakening.  Illusions have a real existance, but we make mistakes about what that existance is.  Echoes exist in reality just as they are, and they’re just as empty as anything else we encounter.  We don’t need to hate them or get rid of them—or cling to them.  After all, in the Sansuikyo, Dogen says that the colors of the mountain peak and the echoes of the valley stream are all nothing other than Śākyamuni’s voice and appearance.

Let’s see what Dogen has to say about right speech:
“Right speech as a branch of the path” is the mute self not being mute. Mutes among [ordinary] people have never been able to express the truth. People in the mute state are not mutes: they do not aspire to be saints,and do not add some thing spiritual onto themselves. [Right speech] is mastery of the state in which the mouth is hung on the wall; it is mastery of the state in which all mouths are hung on all walls; it is all mouths being hung on all walls. (2)

He’s referring to at least two different texts here, so let’s start with beginning of his comment and then chase down the other two sources.

While we might think that someone who doesn’t say anything isn’t communicating or transmitting anything, Dogen says that’s not the case.  We’re manifesting awakening or buddha nature whether we’re talking or not, because we’re not separate from emptiness or thusness.

People in the mute state don’t aspire to be saints and don’t add something spiritual onto themselves.  They’re simply being 100% what they are, with no need to have ideas about whether that’s good or bad or samsara or nirvana.  When we’re seeing with the eyes of Buddha or seeing from the point of view of emptiness, we’re not worrying about lying, rumors, slander, idle talk, or divisive speech.  We’re not trying to prevent these things because the urge to commit them doesn’t arise when we see the world clearly.  We can see that this stuff isn’t helpful and in fact causes harm.  We don’t have to call right speech a “spiritual practice” or anything special.  We don’t have to think of ourselves as bodhisattvas or virtuous people; we can let go of those ideas.  What arises in this moment is a natural response to conditions.  Whether we’re speaking or listening or reading or not, we’re not clinging to the self as the reference point.

The next part of Dogen’s comment is:
[Right speech] is mastery of the state in which the mouth is hung on the wall; it is mastery of the state in which all mouths are hung on all walls; it is all mouths being hung on all walls.

This is connected with his poem 18 in a collection of 125 verses recorded at the end of the Eiheikōroku: 

Natural wondrous wisdom itself is true suchness.
Why should we employ Confucian discourse or Buddhist texts?
Rely on sitting at ease at your place, 
and hang your mouth on the wall.
Friends arrive here and are released from emptiness.

Natural wondrous wisdom itself is true suchness.  When we see reality beyond human thinking or desires, we see emptiness.  We don’t create or acquire this kind of wisdom by study.  It’s just about seeing things as they are.  This is our original condition, experiencing things without hindrance or delusion.  Then our discriminative thinking kicks in and we start making judgements about what we like and don’t like, and on that basis we take some action and create some karma.  We do this over and over and go around and around the wheel of samsara.  If we can let go of the judging and labeling, we can return to clarity and see beyond distinctions to what this poem calls true suchness.  That original wisdom doesn’t go away when it’s covered by delusion, but it’s not so easy to be in touch with it until we arouse bodhi mind and practice.

Why should we employ Confucian discourse or Buddhist texts?  This is a reminder that language is a problem!  This natural wondrous wisdom isn’t something we can understand with our human brains, or something we can get by reading or listening to teachings, so anything expressed using words can’t be a direct expression of reality.

Rely on sitting at ease at your place, and hang your mouth on the wall.  This line of the poem sends us off in another direction, to a line in a koan story in the Book of Serenity: Great Master Yuanming of Deshan said to the assembly, “When you get to the ultimate end, you just find the buddhas of all times have their mouths ‘hung on the wall.’ “  To come back to thusness or reality, we have to stop processing everything with words and concepts, close our mouths and just sit down.  We need to rely on zazen, “sitting at ease in our place.”  Yuanming says that all those who fully manifest awakening do this.

And finally: Friends arrive here and are released from emptiness.  This kind of emptiness isn’t the “good” kind—it’s not suchness.  It’s hollow or empty discussion that uses words and ideas, but doesn’t actually express reality directly, because it can’t.  In zazen we let go of discriminative thinking, so we’re released from this kind of empty processing

Putting the poem back together:
Natural wondrous wisdom itself is true suchness.
Why should we employ Confucian discourse or Buddhist texts?
Rely on sitting at ease at your place, 
and hang your mouth on the wall.
Friends arrive here and are released from emptiness.

And then, putting Dogen’s comment back together:
“Right speech as a branch of the path” is the mute self not being mute. Mutes among [ordinary] people have never been able to express the truth. People in the mute state are not mutes: they do not aspire to be saints,and do not add some thing spiritual onto themselves. [Right speech] is mastery of the state in which the mouth is hung on the wall; it is mastery of the state in which all mouths are hung on all walls; it is all mouths being hung on all walls.

Right speech on the everyday level is speech that doesn’t create suffering for ourselves or others, and right speech at the absolute level is letting go of concepts, voice and words altogether, as the gate statement says, because we recognize them as echoes that can’t express reality directly.  Even though language is a problem, we have to use it and try to express something, without an idea about “me” saying something special or grand.  Even if we don’t say anything, we’re not really mute.  The universe continues to express itself through us with its continuous functioning.  Because of interconnectedness, we’re always transmitting something and receiving something in this moment.

Dogen returns to this theme of going beyond words and seeing reality as it is many times in his writings.  In one of his poems, Dogen says The ocean waves crash like thunder below the cliff.  I strain my ears and see the face of Kanjizai.  Kanjizai is Avalokiteshvara.  When Dogen hears the crashing waves, he strains his ears and sees the face of the bodhisattva.  If we’re really awake, all of this transmitting and receiving isn’t dependent on eyes or ears.  

Avalokiteshvara is the one who hears the cries of the world, but I’m guessing he’s not just hearing the sound of the cries.  He’s getting it with his whole body in a way that doesn’t depend on words and language.  Kanjizai means “seeing freely,” and another name for Avalokiteshvara is Kannon, “seeing the sound.”  Kannon sees the reality of suffering even beyond our ability to communicate it in language.  He sees what’s actually happening and responds to that, rather than only to our ideas or his own ideas about what’s going on.  Those ideas are part of reality, but they’re not the whole story.

Dogen wrote a fascicle of the Shobogenzo called Mujo Seppo or Insentient beings preach the dharma.  That phrase was around before Dogen used it; it shows up in a poem by Dongshan from the 9th century and Dogen talks about this poem in his fascicle.  Dongshan’s poem says:
How wonderous! How wonderous!
The expounding of the Dharma by insentient beings is unthinkable.
If I tried to hear it with the ears, it would never be possible to understand.
Only when I hear the voice with my eyes am I able to know it.

Insentient beings are transmitting the dharma just like the people in a mute state in Dogen’s comment on right speech.  If we listen for words coming from a rock or a chair, we’re going to be waiting a long time, and we’re not going to take in the dharma that’s being transmitted.  If we see that rock or chair with the eyes of Buddha, we get what it’s transmitting.  Words about the rock or the chair are echoes of its real being.  If we encounter that thing directly, without thoughts that use the self as a reference point, then that transmission happens seamlessly.

One of the points Dogen takes up in Mujo Seppo is what exactly we mean by “insentient.”  We usually think it means something that doesn’t think or feel or maybe isn’t alive, but Dogen isn’t using it that way.  He means something—including a person—who isn’t caught up in emotions, ideas and concepts, someone who sees clearly with the eyes of Buddha.  Whether or not we’re not caught up in our delusion, we’re still preaching the dharma because we’re always manifesting thusness.  However, when we’re not caught up in our delusion and we’re manifesting awakening, we’re also able to hear the dharma, whether it’s conveyed by language or not.  So yes, if we encounter that rock or tree or waterfall directly, we can see the dharma in the way it functions in form and emptiness, but if we go beyond sentience and insentience and beyond sound and silence, the same thing happens when we encounter people or arhats or buddhas.

In another fascicle called Dotoku or Being able to speak,” Dogen says:
When we are able to speak of the speakable, we do not speak of the unspeakable. Even if we recognize that we are able to speak of the speakable, unless we do not penetrate the fact that the unspeakable is what we are not able to speak, we have not yet attained the face of the buddha-ancestors or the marrow of the buddha-ancestors.

Sometimes we use words and language and concepts, recognizing that they can’t contain all of reality, but we express what we can within these limits and make effort to speak skillfully in ways that move people toward understanding cause and effect.  At the same time, we know that unless we really get that there is something beyond language, we can’t completely manifest Buddha nature or awakening.  We have to see one reality from two sides and express two sides in one action.

Words are symbols for other things, not the things themselves; in that way, all words are false and the only way to make sure you’re telling the truth is to hang your mouth on the wall and not to say anything.  However, this isn’t possible for us as bodhisattvas in the world, so everything we say misses the mark and also everything we say completely expresses the reality of emptiness.  Somehow we function with both of these truths at the same time.

Right discrimination is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we eliminate all discrimination and lack of discrimination.
正分別是法明門、斷一切分別無分別故。

Now we take up the second element of the eightfold path.  You may know this element as right thought or right intention, and in a minute we’ll get to why there are multiple interpretations of this element.

In the Buddhist tradition there is more than one kind of discrimination.  There’s the negative kind that’s based on a limited view, where we pick and choose based on the three poisons, our imagination, our delusions and preconceptions.  There’s also the positive kind of discrimination where we know right from wrong, true teachings from false teachings, etc.  Gate 75 about right view is related to this one.  To quickly review,  in its broadest sense, right view is anything that results in wholesome skillful activity that moves you toward letting go of the three poisons and experiencing awakening, as opposed to mistaken views, that lead to suffering for yourself and others.

More specifically, traditionally right view is a deep understanding of what Buddha taught about things like cause and effect, the three marks of existence, dependent origination, and the four noble truths.  With right view  we see things clearly, but with right discrimination or right thought we choose some action to take based on that right view.  When we have some insight into the nature of reality based on our experience of what Buddha is teaching, then we may reconsider our values, aspiring to live in a certain way and act in a certain way,

Intention connects what we perceive with what we do.  What we think drives what we say and do, and we create karma with body, speech and mind.  Now we see why this element is sometimes called right intention, and how discriminating between wholesome and unwholesome action is related.  Thought, intention and discrimination are all tied up together.

Buddha says there are three aspects of right intention, and these have three parallel kinds of wrong intention.  While he was sitting under the bodhi tree before his awakening experience, he was watching his thoughts and he saw that they had two categories.  They were either about desire, ill will and harmfulness or they were about renunciation, good will and harmlessness.  When he noticed the first kind of thinking, he saw that it led to suffering for himself and others and obstructed wisdom and compassion.  When he noticed the second kind, he saw it was beneficial and let to cultivating wisdom and compassion.  Thus he tried to let go of the first kind of thinking and encourage the second kind.  

If we’re caught up in wrong views, we set unwholesome intentions and take unskillful actions, and if we hold right views, we set wholesome intentions and take skillful actions.  All of the unskillful action in the world starts with views and intentions.  It doesn’t arise from nothing, and the consequences can affect one being or millions of beings.  Whatever personal or societal problems we’re having start with what’s going on up  in our heads.  It’s a manifestation of intention, based on wisdom and compassion or on the three poisons, so we can see why cause and effect is such a central teaching for us.  What we think and say and do has real consequences.

The Buddha’s three kinds of intention are renunciation, good will and harmlessness.

The intention of renunciation counters desire.  Buddha says this teaching runs contrary to the way of the world!  Usually, people follow their desires and believe that the objects of their desires will make them happy.  Buddha says we need to give up those desires, not necessarily on moral grounds but because they cause suffering.  He’s not saying we should give everything away and go live in caves, but we should live in a way that’s appropriate for our circumstances.  We do need to recognize that getting out from under our cravings is tough and we need to be diligent.  It’s not enough just to agree with this teaching; we need to have real intention and actually carry it out by investigating how desires arise and keep us bound up—and that’s not easy or comfortable.

The intention of good will counters ill will.  When we’re feeling angry and frustrated, it can feel good to act out and release that tension, but of course we know that there are likely to be unfortunate consequences to that action.  Acting out doesn’t really allow us to let go of that feeling; it just embeds it more deeply in our habituated thinking.  However, ignoring or suppressing those angry feelings doesn’t help either, because they just leak out somewhere else as passive aggression, or eat away at our self-image and our spirit.

Turning this around so we have goodwill or loving kindness for beings isn’t a matter of being sentimental or feeling obligated to respond to people in a certain way.  It doesn’t come from feelings of personal attachment.  It’s a selfless kind of good will, because the self isn’t the reference point and it applies to everyone, not just people we like.  It’s a matter of taking skillful action based on seeing what’s really happening and how suffering arises and unfolds.  If we’ve got our thinking in order, we can say and do right thing.

The intention of harmlessness counters harmfulness.  While good will is about wishing happiness and wellbeing for others, harmlessness is about having compassion for others and wishing them to be free from suffering.  In both cases, we can put ourselves in the position of other beings and understand that everyone (including ourselves) wants to be happy and well and free from suffering.  

Understanding the four noble truths is central to right intention.  When we understand the nature of suffering in our own lives, the intention of renunciation arises.  When we understand the four noble truths with relation to other beings, then the intention of good will and the intention of harmlessness arise.  Working for these three positive things is said to dislodge thoughts about the three negative things and uproot the three poisons.  We can start to shift our habituated thinking away from unskillful responses to what we encounter, and toward our intention to be free from greed, anger, ignorance.

Here’s what Dogen has to say about this second item on the eightfold path, which he calls right thinking:
“Right thinking as a branch of the path”: When [we] establish this thinking, the buddhas of the ten directions all appear.  So the manifestation of the ten directions, and the manifestation of the buddhas, are just the time of the establishment of this concrete thinking.  When we establish this concrete thinking we are beyond self and transcending the external world; at the same time, in the very moment of the present, on thinking concrete facts we go straight to Vārāṇasī.  The place where the thinking exists is Vārāṇasī.  An eternal buddha says, “I am thinking the concrete state of not thinking.” “How can the state of not thinking be thought?” “It is different from thinking.” This is right consideration, right thinking.  To break a zafu is right thinking. (1)

Probably you’ve picked up on some familiar Dogen patterns here as well as a well known koan.  There are lots of allusions here to other things and other stories, which we’ll take apart in a moment, and all that’s lots of fun for our mental gymnastics, but whatever else he’s talking about, Dogen is always trying to get us to let go of our usual systems of thinking and analyzing.  In this case, he’s actually talking about thinking, but when he’s talking about mountains or okesa or rice bowls, his goal is always exploding our habituated thinking.

We’re always talking about Dogen’s “teachings,” but he’s not trying to “teach” us something.  He’s trying to pry our desperate fingers off of clinging to what we think we know.  In this comment he starts by telling us what happens when we engage in right thinking, and then he goes on to say something about what right thinking actually is.  

Right thinking as a branch of the path
The words he’s using here for thinking are broader than what thinking means in English.  They include wishing, hoping, reflecting and pondering, and that gets added to the original Sanskrit from which it derives that has a sense of direction or purpose. Thus this covers both a general considering and a more specific coming to conclusion, all the ways our brain usually operates.  As we’ve seen, right view is a clear perception of what’s happening, and right discrimination or right thinking turns that into action.

When [we] establish this thinking, the buddhas of the ten directions all appear.  So the manifestation of the ten directions, and the manifestation of the buddhas, are just the time of the establishment of this concrete thinking.
The ten directions are north, south, east and west plus the intermediate directions of northwest, northeast, etc. plus up and down,  It’s Buddhist shorthand for all space in the universe.  Tradition says each direction has its own Buddha land and its own Buddha.  Each of these Buddhas has a particular name and dharma position, like Virtue of Goodness or Without Lament or Offering Treasure.  “Buddhas in the ten directions” are familiar because at the end of chanting a text we dedicate the merit to “All Buddhas, ten directions, three times.”  We’re invoking all the Buddhas everywhere in space and time.  Dogen wrote whole fascicle of Shobogenzo about the ten directions, and in "Uji" he talks about time while in "Jippo" he talks about space, although these two things are completely interpenetrated.

Dogen says in his comment that when we establish right thinking or right intention, at that moment everything in the universe appears as buddha, or awakening.  The phrase “concrete thinking” is interesting, and I have a speculation about what he’s pointing to; you can decide whether you think it’s really where he’s going.  I think concrete thinking means zazen.  Our everyday thinking is about our ideas, stories and conclusions.  It’s “real” in that there’s nothing outside of Buddha’s way, or outside of this one unified reality, but it’s also just our picture of what’s happening.  On the other hand, zazen is a physical activity carried out with this body.  It’s a concrete manifestation of something like awakening or suchness.  We let go of everyday habituated thinking in zazen, so it’s not based on that; it’s a concrete form of opening the hand of thought.  If so, then Dogen is saying that everything manifests as its true nature or as awakening when we sit zazen.  This is realizing something, making it real.

When we establish this concrete thinking, we are beyond self and transcending the external world; in the moment of establishing right thinking, or in the moment of sitting zazen, we drop off body and mind.  In other words, we go beyond the separation into self and other and there’s no internal and external world.  

 At the same time, in the very moment of the present, on thinking concrete facts we go straight to Vārāṇasī.  The place where the thinking exists is Vārāṇasī.
Varanasi was where Buddha first began teaching.  For instance, our meal chant says, “Buddha was born in Kapilavastu, enlightened in Magadha, taught in Varanasi, entered Nirvana in Kushinagara.”  As soon as we sit zazen and establish right thinking, we go straight to where Buddha is preaching the dharma.  We go there in this very moment of the present, even though Buddha lived 2500 years ago.  We aren’t separate from the space and time of the Buddha, and we see his dharma continuing to unfold right here and now.  This very place where we’re doing our thinking is Varanasi.  As the Platform Sutra says, “No-thought is to see and to know all things with a mind free from attachment. When in use it pervades everywhere, yet it sticks nowhere.”

Dogen goes on: An eternal buddha says, “I am thinking the concrete state of not thinking.” “How can the state of not thinking be thought?” “It is different from thinking.” This is right consideration, right thinking.  To break a zafu is right thinking.
Dogen is recalling a famous koan story about Yakusan Igen, and he talks about this story in other places in the Shobogenzo.  He says the activity of every buddha is based on non-thinking, so this is a really important point for him.  He calls Yakusan an eternal buddha.

Now he’s just spent several sentences talking about how we should establish right thinking, and suddenly he seems to be saying that non-thinking is what we really ought to be doing.  This is a frequent Dogen tactic, rapidly shifting from one point of view to another, sometimes within the same sentence.  He’s trying to shake us up.  

The full story of this koan is this:
When Yakusan was sitting in zazen, a monk asked,  “What do you think about, sitting in steadfast composure?” 
Yakusan said, “I think not thinking.” 
The monk said, “How do you think not thinking?” 
Yaoshan said, “Non-thinking.”

Yakusan is an important ancestor for us.  His teacher was Sekito Kisen, who wrote the Sandokai, the merging of difference and sameness.  His student was Ungan Donjo, and Ungan’s student was Tozan Ryokai, one of the founders of the Soto school.  It’s probably not a coincidence that this exchange is happening while Yakusan is sitting zazen; in zazen we let go of habituated thinking, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think.  In this human form, our karma is that the brain makes thought.  We have all kinds of karmic seeds that result in thoughts coming up.  We have memories and habits and fears and plans.  If our brains aren’t making thoughts, there’s probably something seriously wrong, or we’re no longer alive.

One of the footnotes in Opening the Hand of Thought says (and it’s not clear to me whether it was written by Okumura Roshi or Uchiyama Roshi):
When we are sitting, we do not follow our thoughts, nor do we stop them.  We just let them come and go freely.  We cannot call it thinking because the thoughts are not grasped.  If we simply peruse our thoughts, it is just thinking; it is not zazen.  We cannot call zazen not-thinking either, because thoughts are coming and going like clouds floating in the sky. When we are sitting, our brain does not stop functioning, just as our stomach is always digesting.  Sometimes our minds are busy; sometimes our minds are calm.  Just sitting, without being concerned with the conditions of our mind, is the most important point in zazen. (2)

Thoughts are coming up even in zazen.  There’s no goal in zazen of stopping thought, even if that was possible, but we’re doing something other than thinking.  We’re going beyond thinking to non-thinking.  We’re dropping the separation between “me” as a subject and “my thought” as an object.  We’re just letting the universe do what it does, without creating a layer on top of that that’s about “me” thinking a thought.  If there’s no subject and object and there’s just complete functioning, that’s nonthinking.

Okumura Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi frequently use the analogy of putting a car in neutral.  The engine is running but the car isn’t going anywhere.  This nonthinking isn’t intellectual and it’s not something happening in the subconscious; it’s something different.  Nonthinking is where we don’t cling to either linear, sequentual thinking or blank nothingness in the mind.  We’re not trying to leave the everyday world of things and activities, but we’re not getting stuck there either.  We’re not trying to force anything; trying to force something is just another idea or story.  If we’re caught up with that, we really can’t do nonthinking or see reality for what it is.

Kodo Sawaki says:
[In zazen,] the residue does not remain even in the occurrence of thought or in the hearing of sounds.  Sounds are simply heard, and thoughts simply occur and they they naturally disappear, just like the incoming and the outgoing of breath.

In other words, in non-thinking those experiences don’t become seeds that become the basis for new thoughts.  We’re not grabbing them and processing them and coming to conclusions about them.  We’re not holding them up against a yardstick and making judgements and measurements.  We’re also not pushing them away or suppressing them and wishing they weren’t there.  Thoughts are passing through just like breathing.

In zazen we can let go of dualistic ideas, and that’s when the buddhas of the ten directions appear in the midst of nonthinking.  Zazen is where we can really experience what Dogen is talking about in his comment.  That’s why he says we need to break the zafu, or wear out our cushion with our sitting.  We need to sit completely and wholeheartedly, throwing away separation.

Dogen’s comment says the same thing as our gate statement.  It’s a bit of a conundrum, because it doesn’t tell us what right discrimination or right thinking itself is; it just indicates that right thinking is eliminating the difference between thinking and not thinking.  It doesn’t say that thinking and not thinking don’t exist; it says there’s something bigger than that distinction.  This is why there’s no yardstick for zazen.  Zazen is a concrete manifestation of going beyond discrimination.  As soon as non-thinking is happening, there aren’t any categories like delusion and awakening or good and bad or self and other.  There’s just suchness,

The irony is that in order to carry out right intention, we have to let go of any distinction between right intention and harmful intention, and in order to experience right discrimination or right thinking as a dharma gate, we have to let go of it.

Notes:
(1) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 13.
(2) Uchiyama, K. (2005). Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice. Ukraine: Wisdom Publications, p. 179 n 23.  

Right view is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain the noble path on which the superfluous is exhausted.
正見是法明門、得漏盡聖道故.

We’re moving into a section now on the elements of the eightfold path as factors of awakening.  In its broadest sense, right view is anything that results in wholesome skillful activity that moves you toward letting go of the three poisons and experiencing awakening, as opposed to mistaken views that lead to suffering for yourself and others.  More specifically, traditionally right view is a deep understanding of what Buddha taught about things like these.

• cause and effect, or karma: our actions have consequences
• the 3 marks of existence: everything is impermanent, clinging to things is a source of suffering, and nothing has a fixed self-nature
• dependent origination: everything arises from something else when causes and conditions come together
• most especially the Four Noble Truths, which explain the nature of suffering, how it arises and what we can do about it: the life of all beings is characterized by suffering, that suffering is the result of our cravings and aversions which cause us to chase after things we want and run away from things (like death) we don’t want, and there is a way to liberate ourselves and all beings from suffering, and that’s to engage in the practice of eightfold path.

Okumura Roshi has this summary of the eightfold path:
The fourth noble truth, the way to eradicate the causes of suffering, is the eightfold noble path.  To follow this path we must view things correctly, base our thinking on reality instead of egocentricity, speak truthfully, act in accord with the right view, engage in a wholesome livelihood, make diligent efforts, and practice right mindfulness and meditation.  The Buddha gave us these eight guidelines for our practice. . . . This teaching and the practice of the Middle Way to which the Buddha awakened are the shelter and foundation of our life. (1)

The eightfold path is what Buddha talked about in his first sermon.  It’s often depicted as a wheel, without beginning or end and illustrating that all the elements are really arising together.  Yet we also say that the first element of the path is right view.

Well, we need a certain amount of right view in order to get started in practice.  Right view is the first element of the eightfold path because all the rest of those activities have right view as the foundation.  The gate statement says that with right view we attain the noble path.  It makes sense that we’re going to have difficulty with the rest of the path if we don’t have some insight and experience with the four noble truths.  After all, the fourth truth is the eightfold path, which includes right view.

Right view is really important in experiencing awakening and liberating beings, but it’s not enough by itself.  It’s only one of the eight elements of the eightfold path.  Right view is supported by all the others and supports them too.  Right view is what helps us understand what our practice is and what to do.  It’s where our attitudes, values and worldview start, and that’s how we determine what we say, what we do, and whether those are skillful and wholesome or not.

Right view shapes how we see the world and how we see ourselves as part of that world.  Holding right view and seeing reality clearly leads to one set of actions, and holding mistaken views that are covered over by delusion leads to another.  Those actions have consequences and lead to a further unfolding of karma.  Buddha says that no single factor is so responsible for the arising of unwholesome states of mind and the suffering of beings as wrong view, and no factor so helpful for the arising of wholesome states of mind and promoting wellbeing as right view.  Thus right view helps us get started on the path, but we don’t leave it behind as we continue to practice.  Our understanding of right view itself deepens and becomes more subtle as we live and practice, so the wheel keeps turning—there isn’t a beginning or an end.

The eightfold path is divided into three sections: prajna (wisdom), sila (ethics) and samadi (for us, zazen.)  Right view falls into the first section on wisdom.  There are two kinds of knowledge connected with right view.  One is conceptual: intellectually, we can understand what Buddha taught relatively easily; we understand what the words mean.  We engage in some dharma study and read what teachers and ancestors and other practitioners have said about the dharma because in the beginning we don’t have personal experience of the way Buddha sees.  Then we do some discernment and reflection on what we’ve heard or read and how it shows up in our own experience.  This isn’t dry, academic understanding or just memorization; it’s rooted in bodhicitta and an aspiration to practice.  There’s an element of faith involved that motivates us to establish a practice.

The other kind of knowledge connected with right view is experiential.  This is the knowledge we have when we directly experience for ourselves what Buddha is pointing out.  The activities of the eightfold path are aimed at moving us from our base of conceptual right view toward experiential right view.

Bhikku Nanamoli, who was a translator of the Pali Canon into English, says:  If conceptual right view can be compared to a hand, a hand that grasps the truth by way of concepts, then experiential right view can be compared to an eye — the eye of wisdom that sees directly into the true nature of existence ordinarily hidden from us by our greed, aversion and delusion.

I mentioned that one important aspect of right view is seeing cause and effect, how one thing arises from another and nothing comes into being independent of anything else.  That pattern shows up in the four noble truths.  Craving and aversion lead to suffering, and abandoning craving and aversion leads to a lessening of suffering.  It also appears in the twelvefold chain of causation: craving leads to clinging, to feeling, to sense contact, to perception, and so on.  The basic teaching is that when this is, that is; when this is not, that is not.  Things give rise to other things, and if those causes aren’t there, then the resulting thing doesn’t arise.  Seeing conditionality is the foundation of right view.  We can look closely at each thing that arises to learn about it, and we can tell pretty quickly that it’s not actually disconnected from everything else.  It’s not actually independent, and this is what the Buddha saw under the bodhi tree.  He worked backwards from the elements of suffering.

Where we’ve encountered right view in a couple of previous gates, it’s been with regard to discussions about compassion.  Tight view naturally leads to compassion because we see both how suffering arises in beings and that we’re not disconnected and independent from them or from the rest of the planet.  Along with compassion, of course comes a less self-centered worldview.  We’re a bit better able to see how we’re driven by the three poisons to cling to self.

Okumura Roshi says:  I think our way of viewing things is upside down.  We think we are the most important within this world; that this world is our possession.  But, actually, we are a very small part of nature.  What we should do is to turn it over and see the right position of ourselves in nature.  This is what Buddha taught as right view in the Eightfold Noble Path.  This is the way we can live together with all beings.

Again, right view shapes our experience of the world and how we fit into it, which is really basic and foundational.  Right view of self is as empty, impermanent and ungraspable, and also as one completely interconnected node in the network rather than the thing at the top of the pyramid.  Thus centralizing or clinging to right view is a mistake.  Clinging to any view is a mistake, because views change all the time, even views about the dharma and our practice.

We’ve not yet talked about the second half of the gate statement, which describes the eightfold path as a place where we drop the need for adding extra stuff to our experience of this moment.  There are two ways to think about this connection between right view and what’s extra.  One is that if we really get what Buddha is saying, we can see that we don’t need to go looking for things, people or sensations to make us happy and remove our suffering.  Those things are beside the point when it’s the desire itself that’s creating our suffering.  We also don’t need to run around trying out various spiritual practices looking for the one that’s going to save us from ourselves.  All we have to do is deeply investigate the four noble truths and take up the eightfold path.

Ironically, clinging to an idea about the four noble truths is also extra.  It isn’t the same as the actual, alive unfolding of the four noble truths in this moment here and now.  If I try to catch what reality is in this moment and pin it down, I take the freshness and the life out of it because impermanent, dynamic reality has already moved on and left me behind.  My view is already obsolete and superfluous.

Okumura Roshi tells the story of visiting Japanese friends in the US and looking at the atlas their kids were using.  He was surprised that US was shown as the center of the world, and he realized that it’s always true that wherever we are, our view is that this is the center of the world, even though earth is round and there’s no center, corners or edges.  Since we all have this view, we can see how easy it is to step on each other and forget that we actually live in a network of interdependent origination. To us, the map always looks like this place is the biggest and most important place.

Okumura Roshi says: Because an atlas or a map is flat, it has only two dimensions, so something is always distorted. . . . The world created by thought is the same. The shape, size, or directions are not like the real thing.  Our view is distorted by our egocentricity. If we think the map is real and accurate, we make a mistake. Our own view is an incomplete copy of the world we experience. If we grasp our view as the absolutely right view, we make a mistake. We cannot live harmoniously with others whose maps of the world are created by their own karma or conditioned experiences.  When we study how an atlas is made and how it is distorted, it becomes a useful tool for understanding reality. We study how our views are formed. Then we can try to correct the distortion. 

Our idea of the world might not actually be the same as the world, and our idea of right view might not actually be same as right view.  In the end, we even have to put aside idea about what right view is and go beyond distinctions between right view and mistaken or deluded view.  Holding a fixed idea about the world is one of those superfluous things from the gate statement, and so is holding a fixed idea about right view.

Dogen tells a story in the Tenzo Kyokun: Xuefeng Yicun was once the tenzo under Dongshan Liangjie.  One day while Xuefeng was washing the rice Dongshan happened to pass by and asked, “Do you wash the sand and pick out the rice, or wash the rice and pick out the sand?”  I wash and throw away both the sand and the rice together,” Xuifeng replied. (2)  Rice and sand mean right views and mistaken views, or delusion.  Rice of course is the valuable thing—it’s edible as nice food.  Sand is an impurity—it’s not edible and doesn’t feel good on the teeth.  Cleaning rice is an everyday activity in the training temple; sometimes a small group of us would sit around picking bugs and pebbles and sand out of the rice before we cooked it.  

Dongshan is asking Xuefeng: In your everyday activities, do you sift through your mistaken views and look for right views to keep and cultivate, or do you look through your awakened views for delusion and try to get rid of them?  Xuefeng says that without negating the existance of either mistaken view or right view, he goes beyond the distinction.  He throws out ideas of both right view and mistaken view.

Anything we add to the direct experience of this reality is extra.  If we watch ourselves carefully, we might see that we often want to add something else to a situation in hopes of making it “better”--this would all be OK if only . . .   What we usually mean is this would all be OK for me if only . . .  Thus in order to make it OK for me, I choose to see only these elements of the situations, or only these characteristics of mine or someone else, or I write a story about how I wish things were so I can ignore how they really are.  It’s ironic that ignoring stuff is actually extra.  Ignoring stuff is an activity; it takes energy and creates karma because it’s an action.  Actively ignoring stuff is not the same as letting go of thought.  Ignoring stuff means engaging with it.  Letting go of stuff means to stop engaging with it.

Usually ignoring stuff is about protecting the five skandhas that we consider “me.”  If we have right view and really understand what Buddha was saying about suffering and the nature of self, then we don’t have to protect the five skandhas and we can see that doing it is superfluous.  Traditionally, religious speculation is also considered superfluous.  When people asked the Buddha about things like whether there was life after death and how the universe began, he said he knew the answers, but didn’t talk about those things.  He only taught about suffering and how to deal with it, and considered all that kind of speculation to be extra.

Wondering about someone else’s level of attainment or insight and how they got there is also extra.  Buddha said we should just put all that aside and do our best to get to our own clarity.  Put your effort into seeing as clearly as you can for yourself and having your own pure, direct experience of reality.  Don’t worry about what others are doing, or speculate about what’s going on somewhere else or what’s going to happen in the future.  You can’t take action on any of that.  The only thing we have is this reality, this body and mind, and this moment in which we can practice.  Anything else is extra.

Finally, let’s look at another of Dogen’s writings, his comment on right view from his fascicle on the 37 factors of awakening:
“Right view as a branch of the path” is the inside of the eyes containing the body. At the same time, even prior to the body we must have the eye that is prior to the body.  Though the view has been grandly realized in the past, it is realized now as the real universe and is experienced immediately.  In sum, those who do not put the body into the eyes are not Buddhist patriarchs. (3)

“The eye that precedes the body” is like “the eye that precedes the moment,” which we considered a couple of gates ago.  Again, it’s being aware of the space before our habituated thinking kicks in and decides whether sensations are good or bad, and before we take some physical action with the body in response.  We might call it intuition in the sense that we’re aware of something without using our conscious, intellectual reasoning.  This is not magic or a supernatural power; it’s simply being very self-aware and knowing well how we give rise to all the links in the twelvefold chain of causation and the suffering in the four noble truths.

Dogen is reminding us that inside and outside, body and mind, subject and object are not separate from the beginning.  Earlier I mentioned Bhikku Nanamoli’s image of the shift from the hand grasping at things to the eye of wisdom that sees through the three poisons and experiences Buddha’s teachings directly.  The eye that precedes the body doesn’t negate the body.  It goes beyond the distinction between eye and body without negating either one.  That’s how right view goes from being a conceptual exercise to direct immediate experience.  Right view isn’t passive, like looking at the world through a window or on a screen.  It’s not just watching things go by or thinking about the dharma without getting involved.  That would be setting up separation of subject and object.

Those who do not put the body into the eyes are not Buddhist patriarchs.
Those who aren’t manifesting wisdom, compassion, Buddha nature and right view with both body and mind aren’t completely practicing—practice is something we do.

You may have heard previously about the five elements of spiritual health; one of them is knowing what we believe and why.  We don’t usually stop to ask ourselves what we believe and where that belief came from, what shaped the worldview we’re carrying around and how that’s reflected in what we think, say and do.  Our views are usually transparent to us and we think everyone else’s view is the same.  This gate is asking us to do that investigation:

• how closely does my view accord with reality?
• if I believe that there’s a self called me, why do I believe that?
• if I think my life circumstances and the things I own will never change, why do I think so?
• if I believe the only acceptable situation is a life completely without suffering, how realistic is that?

Why do we have the views we have, and are we operating from Right View, with an understanding of the way Buddha sees reality, or from mistaken views that lead us to take unwholesome action based on our delusion?  What are we carrying around in our hearts and minds that’s superfluous?

Notes:
(1)  Okumura, S. (2012). Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts. United Kingdom: Wisdom Publications, p. 69-70
​(2) Uchiyama, K. (2005). How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment. United States: Shambhala, p. 5
(3) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, tr. Nishijima and Cross, vol 4. (2006). United Kingdom: Booksurge Publishing, p. 13.